GENERATION TEE

By Steve Wulf

If you're a golfer, you probably know the feeling. You are about to hit your second shot after a decent enough drive when suddenly another drive comes whistling past, rolling much farther down the fairway. You look back at the group behind you with a mixture of annoyance for the impertinence and admiration for the prowess.

Welcome to the 1997 P.G.A. Tour. It began as the Year of the Tiger, what with Eldrick Woods winning the Masters by an incredible 12 strokes just four months after his 21st birthday. But it has become the Year of the Young Lions. For the first time in history, the first three majors have been won by players under age 30, with Woods getting the green jacket, South African Ernie Els, 27, collecting his second U.S. Open trophy and Texan Justin Leonard, 25, taking home the claret jug of the British Open. All in all, twenty-somethings have fired enough 60-somethings to win 15 of the 30 events on the tour this year. Five of the Top 9 money winners, and 10 of the Top 38, are in their 20s. If Woods or Els or Leonard doesn't win the P.G.A. Championship, which will be played at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y., this week, then Jim Furyk, 27, Stuart Appleby, 26, Phil Mickelson, 27, Paul Stankowski, 27, David Duval, 25, Stewart Cink, 24, or Robert Damron, 24, just might, and thus give the under-30s a clean sweep of the majors. In a sport that usually demands 10 or so years of servitude, these upstarts are clearly playing through.

Generation Tee is of particular interest to tour veteran Tom Kite, 47, who, as captain of this year's 12-man Ryder Cup team, could take as many as six of the kids to Valderrama in Spain the last week of September for the much ballyhooed match between the U.S. and Europe. "No, I don't plan to make them take naps in the afternoon, or anything like that," says Kite. "But I am trying to line up Pampers as an official Ryder Cup sponsor." Seriously, Kite says he's thrilled with the young makeup of his team, and of the tour. "They're really bringing new excitement to golf. The galleries are larger, younger, more exuberant. And it's not just Tiger the fans are following. "

Why the sudden blossoming of talent? Kite chalks it up to the cyclical nature of the game. "When I won the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in '92," says Kite, "it was, 'Oh, no, another 40-year-old wins a major.' There just weren't a lot of 20-year-olds out there at the time." Indeed, golf history seems as well-ordered as Sunday afternoon groupings: Hogan, Nelson and Snead, all born in 1912; Palmer, Player and Nicklaus, winning 10 of 16 majors (1960-63); Watson, Kite and Crenshaw, turning pro one right after the other.

The next threesome up on the tee remains to be seen, but clearly Woods will be one of them. In a way, he is responsible for the esprit de kiddie corps. "There's definitely a Tiger effect," says CBS golf announcer Jim Nantz. "Once the other young golfers saw Tiger bypass the customary apprenticeship, they thought, 'Hey, I can do that too.'" Leonard said as much after his British Open victory: "Having seen Tiger do so well, having seen Ernie do so well, maybe I thought it was O.K. to go out and win a tournament like this being the age I am."

Leonard is also part of the Texas golf tradition handed down from Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan to Jimmy Demaret to Lee Trevino to Kite and Ben Crenshaw. Growing up in Dallas, Justin was so golf-mad that he wrote school papers on Nicklaus, Player and Palmer and practiced his short game inside the house. He recalled one hole as "up the stairs, around the dining room table and over the dog." The enormity of his desire was somewhat mitigated by his small stature, but Leonard delighted in beating opponents who far outdrove him. Because Leonard rarely loses his composure, tour friend Brad Faxon calls him a flat-liner. That trait is, in one way, a gift from his father and his golfing buddies at Royal Oaks--they routinely threw tees and taunts at the kid just as he would swing.

While at the University of Texas, Leonard won both the 1992 U.S. Amateur and the 1994 NCAA championship. Last year he earned nearly $1 million, drove away with the Buick Open and found himself in Cosmopolitan as one of the magazine's most eligible bachelors. Even though Leonard won the Kemper Open in June, he was still on the fringe of the Ryder Cup team. The week of the British Open he had dinner with Kite, a fellow Longhorn alum, and Kite told him, "Why don't you just go ahead and take care of your Ryder Cup spot this week?" Just as the Prince Andrew look-alike finished his final-round 65 to win by three strokes, Kite, who had finished 10th, was at the airport preparing to fly home. The Ryder Cup captain decided to return to Royal Troon to tell Leonard, "Welcome to the team."

There is another theory to explain the sweet birdies of youth. As with most sports, the athletes are simply better than they once were, and that has enabled them to make a quicker impact. Woods is, of course, Exhibit A, the longest hitter on the tour despite his tender age and slender build. But Els is also a prime example of the new athleticism. When President Clinton saw the 6-ft. 3-in. Els at Congressional, he commented, "Big, strong kid, isn't he? Looks like a linebacker."

Growing up in Johannesburg, Els showed promise in tennis, rugby and cricket, as well as golf. When Els at 14 beat Mickelson for the Junior World Golf championship, his father, who owned a trucking company, decided to scrap the tennis court in the backyard and build a putting green. Following high school, Els spent two years in the army, then turned pro. But it wasn't until after a post-party car accident that Els decided to take golf seriously. "I wasn't living right and just felt like it was time to get focused, stop the bull and go for it."

After Els introduced himself to the world with his victory in the 1994 U.S. Open at Oakmont, Pa., playing partner Curtis Strange said, "I think I just played with the next god." Eschewing that elevation, Els said he thought he might win another Open some day. That day came last June, when he outlasted Tom Lehman, Colin Montgomerie and Jeff Maggert at Congressional.

Els isn't the only tyro from outside the U.S. Appleby, who is 9th on the money list, is from Australia. At least four members of captain Seve Ballesteros' European Ryder Cup team are under 30: British Open runner-up Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland, 28; Lee Westwood of England, 24; Thomas Bjorn of Denmark, 26; and Padraig Harrington of Ireland, 25. "This youth thing is definitely catching on," says Kite.

One consolation for the golfers' being chased off the course is that yet another generation is waiting a few holes back. The other day, an eight-year-old in Franklin, Tenn., made his second hole-in-one of the summer. His name is Patrick Wood. Guess what his nickname is.